Since the 2024 election cycle, much has been said about creators and the political power they possess. A new study, however, found that YouTube’s automated systems may be curbing that influence. A group of researchers led by Mert Can Cakmak of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock tracked recommended videos on YouTube Shorts and determined that the algorithm tends to steer viewers of political content toward more typical forms of entertainment.
The study required the classification of 685,842 videos to examine an experimental group of politically-charged uploads. The researchers t tracked more than 2,100 videos that touched on one of three categories: Ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea, the 2024 Taiwan presidential election, and more “general” topics (for the control group).
The researchers then simulated 50 video recommendations per clip across multiple viewership scenarios (i.e. the amount of time spent watching the initial video). For content within the politically-charged categories, recommendations tended to shift toward non-politicized entertainment, and the tone of the recommended videos shifted from “neutral or angry” to “joyous or neutral.”
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Cakmak suggested that the YouTube Shorts algorithm’s recommendation choices are not informed by any sort of political animus, but rather by a potential engagement bump associated with positive content. “What YouTube is trying to do,” he wrote, “[is] remove you from that area or topic, and push you [to a happier] topic so that it can increase…engagement [and] earn more money.”
The algorithm’s apparent disfavor for political content is yet another hurdle for the young, motivated generation of creators who are looking to cover newsworthy topics. Those creators’ monetization struggles have become so pronounced that YouTube reportedly urged its moderators to ease up on sensitive cultural, social, and political topics. A recent study published by NeoReach found that news and political creators have the lowest average annual revenue among all surveyed categories.
Even though the evidence suggests that YouTube puts its thumb on the scales to limit the reach of political content, the platform is nevertheless a trusted news source for millions of its viewers. One gets the sense that YouTube’s decision-makers aren’t sure how to handle the complex political reality we live in, as evidenced by the repeated flip-flops on the subject of election denialism. If YouTube’s creator class is going to get involved in local and national politics, the platform itself needs to figure out its own role.
